


Should I take chances

by shipatfirstsight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, canon compliant up until a certain point, trying to explain the mess that is the force ghosts not helping Ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22017193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/shipatfirstsight
Summary: “Tell me how to help my son,” Leia orders. It doesn’t matter who, they’re all there, and all she needs is one of the multitudes of Jedi to help her boy. He looks lost, looking for them, calling out for them, cradling Rey in his arms.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 148





	Should I take chances

**Author's Note:**

> At least TROS returned my motivation to write Rey/Ben, so there's that silver lining. Title from "Beautiful Ghosts" by Taylor Swift.

“Tell me how to help my son,” Leia orders. It doesn’t matter who, they’re all there, and all she needs is one of the multitudes of Jedi to help her boy. He looks lost, looking for them, calling out for them, cradling Rey in his arms.

Anakin shakes his head at her. “He has to make the choice. We can’t help him unless he sacrifices--”

“If he does this, he will _die_ . Palpatine manipulated him his whole life, doesn’t he get a chance to actually live without that hanging over him. Why didn’t any of you ever _help_ him?” Part of it is directed at herself. Why couldn’t she see what was happening to him? They’d all made assumptions though. He was the grandson of Darth Vader--but they’d forgotten that Vader was Anakin too. They’d all forgotten the lessons they’d learned.

“We didn’t know,” Anakin explains, looking ashamed and heartbroken. “Palpatine hid himself for thirty years, Leia. I don’t know how he managed it.”

“When I looked into his mind that night in the temple,” her brother puts in, “I thought it was Ben. It didn’t seem like another presence. We were all fooled.”

“Why can’t we help him now, then?” she’s getting as close to begging as she ever gets, but this is important--her son, alone, fighting that monster, thinking he’d lost all of them.

“Choose, he must,” Yoda says, sagely. 

“If he gives his life for hers then we can intervene,” this from Mace Windu, “but we can’t interfere in matters of life and death until that point. It has to be his choice to make the sacrifice. And if he chooses, we can help him return.”

Time moves slower here, in the force, so they are all able to watch as Ben hugs Rey’s body to him. They feel his resolve, but what they don’t feel is almost as important--he is not angry with them for not answering his calls. He hadn’t expected them to anyway. All that’s in him is steely resolve for Rey to live and...love for her. It is both of those things that lead her son to place his hand on Rey’s stomach, trading his life for her own.

They watch the tender moments when Rey sits up, alive once more, breathing Ben’s name, pulling him toward her so that she can kiss him. Ben’s smile, lighting up his face. They feel his acceptance then, his genuine happiness that the girl in his arms will in fact live. And then they watch as confusion overtakes Rey’s own joy, as she follows his crumbling body. 

It is a relief when his body disappears, and he joins them. 

“How am I here?” are the first words out of his mouth.

Leia rushes to him, folding him in her arms. “You returned to the light.”

“But I--”

“Ben, if I get to be here after twenty years of serving the empire and Palpatine, you get to be here too.” Anakin is there now, beside them, and Ben’s eyes grow wide as his grandfather clasps his shoulder. “I’m so sorry for what you had to endure alone.”

“I made choices,” Ben says. “It wasn’t all them.”

“Maybe not,” Luke affirms. “But you have a chance to go back and see.”

“Go...back?” 

Leia smiles at him. “If you want, we,” she points at all the gathered Jedi, “can help you return to life. And to Rey. You’ll have another chance.”

He breathes deeply, looking around, refusing to make eye contact, and swallowing several times before he says, “I’ve had too many chances.”

“My son,” Leia cups his cheek as she speaks, and he turns his face into the comforting touch. Touch-starved, she realizes, and wonders how long it has been since anyone touched him without trying to hurt him. “Do you know what you did was wrong?”

“It was evil.”

“Will you ever do any of it again?” Luke asks.

Vehemently shaking his head, Ben denies the question. “Of course not. But if I go back, I’ll have to face the consequences of my actions. I won’t go back just to die again. I can’t do that to Rey again. I can feel her, mom, even now. She’s in so much pain.”

Leia’s smile grows. “I’d planned for this. Some people will probably never forgive you for your role in the First Order but one of my last orders was to issue a pardon to my son should he choose to defect and take up the rebel cause.”

Shock again in her son’s eyes. “Mom, how can you forgive me after all I’ve done? To the galaxy, to _dad_ …”

“I might not have been able to if I hadn’t felt _your_ pain when it happened. If you’d been glad, if you hadn’t had the conflict in yourself before and after you did it. It didn’t happen right away, but I forgave you.”

“If you want to go back,” Mace Windu interrupts, “you have to choose soon. Rey is leaving, and it is your bond that will bridge the gap between life and death for you.”

Ben looks over the ghosts, over his family, all either smiling or looking at him encouragingly. 

It is Qui-Gon who breaks the silence. “The force is not done with you yet my boy. Go and make the galaxy a better place with her.”

He closes his eyes, breathing deeply. “I want to go back. I want to try.”

They nod, accepting his choice. One by one, Anakin, then Luke, then finally Leia wraps him in their arms. 

Anakin tells him, “I’m proud of you. You have finished what I started, even if it wasn’t in the way you thought.”

Luke, whispers wryly, “And I don’t want to see either of you here for a good long time.”

And from Leia, “Never forget that you are loved.”

And then they send him back, his body filling his clothing once more. They watch as he takes his first breath, and Rey’s face freezes before she pulls him back up to a sitting position, running her eyes over his frame, almost greedily, though disbelief lights her eyes.

“Are you really back?” she asks, and when he nods it looks like a weight is lifted off of her shoulders. 

“Let’s give them some privacy,” Anakin suggests, and they agree, pulling their gazes elsewhere, to the mourning and celebrations of the rebellion.

* * *

“Sweetheart,” Ben murmurs, letting his arms encircle Rey loosely, pressing his forehead to hers. They stay that way for a while, breathing each other in, relief calling the shots. Finally, they pull away from each other, rushing back to the tight fit of the X-Wing and leaving Exegol behind them.

“We did it,” Rey finally says, breaking the silence once they’ve entered space. “And somehow we both survived.”

Her face grows serious. “Ben, you were gone. Your body wasn’t there anymore.”

He explains what happened, and there are tears clogging both of their voices as they comfort each other.

Later, alone after a long round of reunions and accusations and apologies and explanations, back on the Falcon and headed toward Tatooine for a goodbye to his family and her mentors and to start their new life, she turns her head towards him slightly. 

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” she says simply and bluntly. 

It’s a wonderful shock for him to hear, and smiling widely, remembering his parent’s stories, his first response is a simple, “I know,” and then panic and good sense returns and he tries to correct, “I mean, I’d hoped and I felt _something_ from you, but I wasn’t sure.”

Rey is laughing now, fully facing him, pure, unadulterated happiness lighting her features. “I didn’t know you were so given to rambling.”

He huffs at her, but smiles anyway, unable to not return the expression, ruining the effect of his small show of annoyance.Growing serious, he finally murmurs, “I love you, Rey.”

“Oh,” she breathes, “oh, that is nice to hear. Though I probably should have told you that _I_ know how _you_ feel about me.”

Later still, standing in each other's arms after burying the lightsabers outside Luke's childhood home, Ben takes her in his arms and she goes willingly, tangling her fingers in his hair to pull his head down, their foreheads touching briefly before she tugs gently, and with a smile he settles his lips over hers. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!


End file.
